I was almost taken by Random House, and it was a
bright moment for me, but like I said “almost.”
There are things why a self
published author chose to be what they are. Mine is many things. One could
argue (meaning no one will argue because no one cares, yet) that I was tired on
sending out query letters that the literary agents would only reject by the use
of very informal email sent by a robot. But I won’t just explain my side here, I’m
going to put my empathy helmet and direct it to the literary agents and all who
comes after them. First of all what do literary agents do? They find a good
book, a well written book, a book with an outstanding voice. Now if the
literary agent is based on New York or just flat out famous in the world of publishing,
the submission of letters to them per day are always by a digital-ton.
Everybody uses email in this generation, it’s easy and direct. Now do agents
have the time to read these? Here is where their assistants come in. They would
sort out the bad and the good, and they are demanded to do this in a short
time.
What if my story did make it the
shortlist? What then? Would it be taken by this famous agent? The answer is
less likely. Agents (some agents… okay most agents in my opinion) follow the
trends; it’s like the recent financial crisis of Europe, the investors went to
Asia and now when the market is already stabilizing in Europe that same
investors are returning to where they started. Let’s be honest, people love
money and only a few do it because they heart told them to do it. Agents are
like that, few of them believe in a book entirely, the more experienced agents follow
the trends because if you think like them you would know. I bet you that there
is a time where they believe in something, in a book and an author; they spent
their time finding a good editor, after that they would send the final manuscript
to the big publishers, none would accept, but in the end the finished
manuscript found its way home to a sincere publisher that would love to print
it. And then the publisher gave up gazillions of money in advertising for
months, but when the book hit the shelves, only a few bought it and never
really reached its value—and what values is that you ask? It’s the worth of it
to agent, the editor, the money spent by the publisher, and most of all, the
author.
The author would take the entire
dump with all of its nasty bits because he wrote a book, a book where he gave
his time and sweat and blood and all the bodily fluids he could muster. He will
be depressed in years, but he will write, yes he will unless that author is not
really a writer, maybe he’s just wearing a mask and thought that when one
writes a book, the world would brand him as genius—we don’t know.
Seriously I love the agents, I love
to have one, but I also know that they’re humans, they need money to eat and to
live and we have to admit that they won’t have one if they just take every
poorly-everything book all the time. They are forced to become coldhearted,
they are forced to close the blinds when a pauper knocking on their window
because this, everything of this doesn’t run in dreams but money where business
triumphs above all. I know that every literary agent is a good, kind person and
I love to meet them, but not as a writer.
This, the trends where the money
revolves are the reason why there a sudden boom of dystopian books and
everything paranormal, and everything has a romance in them. All who is the
first is the lucky ones, those who were born earlier where finding a good agent
and a publishing house was easy. What I’m saying is the pre-internet era where
everything is done by hand. There are fewer writers back then; today we are by
millions if not billions. Ninety percent of us will give up and go on with our
lives, but the ten percent, well, those are the writers who are willing to
wait. They will find time in every pieces of the day to type that goddamn
words, to tell a story no one really cares about. I have no idea if they will
succeed but I have an idea that they will have fun if only they take their mind
away from publication.
The thing is, writers should hone
their craft and be isolated and shout SCREW YOU to all their publication
dreams. If they have been found fit in all the elements of writing, then they
should not take the publication cut-throat industry seriously. One should
always keep writing seriously even if only one reader loves the book.
No comments:
Post a Comment